“Come on! Git your asses up and out of there!” I hollered, trying to rouse the people in the tent. The dumb asses had stuck their little Honda car in the bottom of the dry wash and had pitched a little tent right beside it. Only thing was, the dry wash weren’t gonna be dry no more. There was thunder and lightning off to the East a piece; A sure sign of a real gullywasher, and this here was the gully that about to get washed. You could already see birds fly and critters head for high ground. The water was most likely just a few minutes away.

The tent flap opened and a sleepy-eyed man stuck his head out. “This is BLM property and we have every right to camp here.” He said, fumbling with his eyeglasses to see who he was yakking at.

“You’re a minute away from getting your asses wet!” I hollered. “High waters’ coming any second.” I could hear it by then; a low rumble, kind of like a stampede. He could to, because he ducked back into the tent and grabbed his woman and they both stood up, he in shorts and tee shirt, her in one of them nightie things, and looked around.

“Scott!” He hollered, then went over to the Honda car and started pounding on the roof. “Wake up, Scott!” The window finally rolled down and a sleepy half-growed kid looked out. “Get out of the car, Scott,” the man said, then looked up the wash. “Oh shit!”

A six feet high wall of water, brown as mud and damned near as thick, was coming on fast. The door of the car flew open and the boy, wearing only underpants, jumped out and started running down the wash. The man and his woman hollered at the boy then made a dash for the bank. I put the spurs to Smoky and started off after the boy. The old cow pony went into afterburner and we caught up with him, but the little turd still went straight down the wash, trying to outrun the flood instead of heading for high ground like he should of done. There weren’t nowhere to grab him ‘cept by the neck, so I took out my rope and lassoed him around the shoulders and headed for the bank, the kid in tow. There was half a foot of water now and he fell down and I had to drag him part way, so when we finally made high ground his shorts were down around his thighs, dingaling a dangling in the breeze.

“Sorry about that,” I said, freeing the rope so he pull his undies up and join his parents.

“Thank you,” the man finally said. “You probably saved our lives.” He and his wife and son were huddled around the fire I’d built, sharing my poncho and heavy coat. “Can you find our car? All of our clothes are in it.”

“Your car will be halfway to the Rio Grande before it stops,” I told them. “And if you ever do find it it’ll be rolled into a ball and packed clear full of mud.” I finally got around to taking a good look at them. The man was thirty-five or so, fit, and about my size. The woman looked younger, but women are like that. She was blonde-headed and had a nice rack and a real cute caboose. The boy was twelve or thirteen or so and looked embarrassed as hell about what he either did have or didn’t have in his wet shorts.

They lived in Las Vegas and were on a Spring break trip to visit someone in El Paso. The fancy GPS unit in their car showed a road through here and they’d decided to get off the highway and see some scenery on the way. The had crossed the dry wash a ways back and figured it was the road, and had kept on going down it until they got the car stuck, then bedded down for the night in the emergency tent that they always carried. “There used to be an old wagon road through here,” I commented, “but even if you could find it you’d need a pretty good Jeep nowadays to get through.”

They weren’t going anywhere barefoot and half-naked, so I left them the thermos of coffee and the lunch I’d packed and headed for home. I got Smoky settled down in the barn, and rounded up some of my wife and daughter’s extra clothes, and then my hired hand and I got on the Polaris fourwheelers and went back to fetch them. The cast off clothes and boots fir them all right, even though the boy acted a little put out about wearing a girl’s jeans and jacket.

The man’s name was Ted Jacobs and he did something with computers, she was Sandra and counted money in one of the Casinos, and Scott would be fourteen come July. I let them use the satellite phone to call their relatives, then explained that I’d take them to civilization in the pick-up truck once the rain stopped and the road dried out, probably in a few days. I explained that our fifteen-year-old daughter boarded in town during the school year and hadn’t come home for Spring Break because she’d heard the weather would be bad, and that they were welcome to use her room and that Scott could camp out in the bunk house with George, the hired hand. We had lots of food and fuel for the generator and they might as well try to enjoy themselves.

Ted had never been around a working ranch and was curious about how everything worked but was utterly useless when it came to helping out, so he went to work debugging and sorting out my computer. Sandra fit right in and didn’t seem to mind cooking, cleaning, and shoveling horseshit with my wife, and Scott spent a lot of time in the barn getting cozy with Smokey, probably either wish’n he was as smart as the horse or had as big a meat.

The rain stopped and a couple of days later it dried out pretty good. George and I had a lot of work to do on the fences and with the stock so my wife drove our guests into town so they could rent a car. They all seemed a little sad to go, and I don’t know what all my wife told them, but come the first of June we got a letter from them asking if we might allow Scott to come out and work for a month or so. We wouldn’t need to pay him nothing; they felt they already owed us plenty.

“What do you think about some help this summer?” I asked George. It’s my ranch and I’ll do as I damned well please, but George had been on the ranch longer than me, and besides that, the bunk house was his territory.

“Well, we could maybe get the rest of the fencing done,” He said with a kind of grin. “We’ll need to do something ‘bout those bedsprings, though. Otherwise I ain’t gonna sleep a wink. Right active sleeper, the lad is.” George was over sixty, but he’d been young once himself.

“He sure as hell ain’t gonna bed down with Charlene,” I answered, referring to my daughter. “So you just handle the meat beat’n however you want.”

I know that kids that age grow fast, but in the three months since I’d last seen him it looked like Scott had growed three inches. He seemed real eager to go to work, and once he got over having a fifteen year old girl around that was taller and stronger and smarter than he was he buckled right down. He took to the horses right away, and although he couldn’t rope for shit and would never win no fancy belt buckle, within a week he was at least somewhat competent on a horse, and like all car crazy kids he spent the rest of his spare time on one of the fourwheelers.

I don’t know what was said between him and George, but George didn’t complain no more about the kid’s sleeping habits, or maybe the kid was just too damned tired at night to whack off. I was kind of worried about him and my daughter, but she’s a tough little cookie and was all gaga over some boy from town anyhow.

The kid didn’t talk much but he watched George and me like a hawk and he was a real quick learner, and he turned out to be real good help. I kinda wished he’d stuck around a little longer, and I even told him he could come back next summer and work for wages, but come the first of August he had to get back home so we kissed him goodbye and put him on the bus.

“Hey George,” I asked a couple of weeks later. “Where in the hell you put the elastrator?” The elastrator was what we used to nut the calves with, and I’d looked all over for the damned thing.

“Damned if I know,” George answered after thinking about it for a spell. “Last I recall seeing it the kid and I banded some calves out on the old Hopper spread. Far as I know I put it and the jar of bands back in the cabinet in the tack shed.”

“Well, they sure as hell ain’t there now,” I replied. Georges memory ain’t ‘zactly what it used to be. “How ‘bout checking your saddlebags, just in case?”

“Ain’t there, neither,” George said later. “Damned thing was about wore out anyhow.” He was right. It was due for replacement and I’d order up a new one, and mean time I’d just have to nut the calves with a knife like we used to do all the time.

A couple of weeks after that we got us a registered letter from some Las Vegas lawyer. Seems as how he was representing Ted and Sandra Jacobs, who were suing me on behalf of their minor child Scott, to whom we had willfully and negligently provided a Wilkins Model 32 Elastrator tool and twenty-four rubber livestock castration bands, and had provided said minor child with instructions on said tool’s usage, and were therefore partially responsible for said minor child’s self-castration. If that don’t just beat all.